Paul Eprile (Canada)

Join us for a reading with French language translator Paul Eprile (Canada). Paul will be reading from his translation of Jean Giono’s Melville, A Novel (forthcoming, September 2017, NYRB).

A native of Ontario, Canada (born 1954), Paul Eprile studied English literature and medieval history at the University of Toronto. In 1974, he forsook the big city to work as a farmhand and beekeeper, before embarking on a career in community development, first as a popular educator and consultant with indigenous communities in Canada, and later as a regional planner in the Republic of Vanuatu (South Pacific).

In 1994, Eprile joined a small, independent, Toronto-based publishing house, Between the Lines. For the next fifteen years, he worked in book publishing. He then moved back to his home in the country where he edited book manuscripts as a freelancer.

Meanwhile, his passion for the French language and French literature, and a fascination with Provence, led him to begin translating the works of the Provençal author Jean Giono. His first translation, Hill (Colline) was published by New York Review Books in 2016. The second, Melville: A Novel (Pour saluer Melville) will appear in September 2017. Eprile is now working on a third Giono novel, forthcoming from NYRB: The Open Road (Les grands chemins).

Eprile lives on the Niagara Escarpment near Creemore, Ontario, with his wife, Debbie Honickman, a family doctor and psychotherapist.